Echos

In the beginning, there became the First Cell.

The First Cell is regarded by most scientists and shamans alike in Echos to be like what the Big Bang Theory is to us on Earth. It was the first time in our known universe where something was set from a "0" to a "1." Who caused it or why it happened eludes us on Earth, but in Echos...

Those who claim responsibility reign sovereign here in Echos. They are loved and feared, worshiped, sacrificed to, They are undying, they cannot be killed. because theyre already dead

They are the Deathless, the Ascended Ones. Their ancestors were birthed by leylines of pure life existing in the Yawning Void, and they came to the ashen ocean of Echos, and cultivated life into it. They created an Infinity Shard to pierce into the Void itself and pull from it our world. This is how the Known World rose from the abyss, according to the mythos of the Deathless. The Known World is vastly similar to the global map plotted for Earth, with names differing for a majority, except a few uncanny consistencies.

However Echos is not a celestial body. Echos is more than anything, a plane existing in space and time itself, unbound by certain laws of the universe as we know it here on Earth. You will find that the Unknown world consists of the Big Ice to the south, and the Limelands to the North, with an unending sea to the east and West, it would seem. In the night sky, you will see no stars. Instead, you will find millions and millions of distant, far off diamond-like shapes, glowing intensely bright with colors across the spectrum. Modern Astrophysics on Echos have led us to believe the centers of these "Holes in the Sky" could lead to parallel dimensions. We just call them stars anyways.

The continents of Echos are mapped tens of thousands of earths after maps of the Earth were made, creating a more widely spaced world with small differences to land formations. Most transportation is based on the sea. Sea-planes evolved into high speed sea cruisers capable of high-speed flights, and massive flying fortresses capable of refining their own fuel have become cross-continental methods of transportation. A few species live in the sea itself, so flotilla cities have sprung from the sea for trade and commerce, one of which is the size of a small country.

Cities in Echoes have become a sacred thing. With the WIldlands as, well, wild as they are, the mortal species have not been able to explore and settle as much as they have on Earth. In the ancient days of the Echos civilizations, the concept of exploration was inconceivable until the invention of weapons like the ballista plus the most powerful of magick were the only hope of surviving a single attack from a pack of wyverns or ashen bears. As such, cities have become more far and few between, but the ones that are plotted on the Known World are marvels of all the mortal species' efforts to survive the savage land of Echos. This has not come without the aid of not only the wisdom and gifts of knowledge bestowed by the Deathless to mortalkind, but from salvaging the ruins of the massive ancient Deathless structures that litter the Echos landscape. A cybernetic claw the size of a skyscraper here, an abandoned temple filled with deathless blades and firearms there, etc. These ancient technological marvels, although unusable by both mortals and Deathless alike, are from wars and ages simply lost in time. We call these frequent "unknown" points in history the times before The Big Autumn, or The Fall.

Something else evolved from Echoes since its primordial beginnings as well, and that is magick.

Magick is only possible in Echos because of much higher amounts of Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) showing up in the primordial growth of the mortal species. This is the easiest, scientific explanation for Echos. However to the young mage student, the ancient Magick "law" in Echos is defined as "The Artful and Intellectual Ability* to Invoke a Change* with Will and Effort."

With magic to aid technology and vice versa, the marvels of the modern age are plenty - but trying to industrialize magick products has proven to be extremely difficult. This is why renowned craftmanship is sought after in Echos. Glasses, wallet, shoes, gun, knife, multi-purpose exo-suit, all of it should be made with Wild steel. However videogames, cameras, guns, medical supplies, and tons of other goods thrive in mass-produced quantities, so the rise of the modern economy is more or less the same.